Charlie Kaufman has written a play set in the present. The exact
present. By the time you finish reading this sentence, the
play’s setting will have passed. And come again. As only a
Charlie Kaufman play could.
At the same time, Kaufman has written a play about the past. And
the future. But not the present. As only a Charlie Kaufman play
could.
Kaufman has written a play about going to see his play. The
actors play themselves, the actors, and they also play the
audience. The audience (the real audience) watches the audience
(the fake audience), respond to the actors, the characters, played
by the actors, the actors. As only a Charlie Kaufman play
could.
If it doesn’t immediately make sense, it’s not
supposed to. If it does, you probably don’t understand it.
That’s the way Kaufman works, and in this case
“works” doesn’t exclusively mean writes.
There has to be much more going on in that 46-year-old head of
his than what appears on paper, and what appears on paper is
complicated enough. He wrote a movie that assumes humans are
puppets (“Being John Malkovich”), and another that
assumes memory is erasable (“Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless
Mind”). He read a book about orchids, and wrote a movie about
himself (“Adaptation”).
In other words, Kaufman thinks much more than he writes, which
means he writes only a fraction of what he thinks. He does them
both with style, even if he doesn’t know it.
“I’d be hard-pressed to know what that style
is,” he said. “I don’t consciously say, “˜I
want to write a Charlie Kaufman movie.’ I always set out to
do something I don’t know how to do.”
This time it was a play. The one set in the present. The exact
present.
When thinking about Kaufman, you always end up going around in
circles. You think about him, about his work, and you think
you’re making progress. You think you’re beginning to
understand, so you keep thinking, keep moving, until you realize
you’re not moving forward, toward some conclusion, but around
one.
Then you’re back where you started, and you don’t
know how you got there. So you start over, and move in a different
direction.
Ңbull;Ӣbull;Ӣbull;
Kaufman has written a play set in the present. It has no action,
no stage directions, but lots of sound cues. It’s part of an
experimental project developed by film composer Carter Burwell
called Theater of the New Ear, in which Burwell produces plays as
staged readings with live music that he composes and conducts.
In addition to the actors and musicians, a foley artist is also
on stage, providing any necessary sound effects. The actors sit on
stools, scripts in hand. The musicians sit in chairs, stands in
front of them, watching their conductor. The foley artist has all
of his props laid out in front of him.
Burwell and Kaufman call them “sound plays,” which
sounds new and innovative, but also sounds like the good
old-fashioned radio play of the past. Both are all talk with no
visible action. Both rely on the ear over the eye.
“The challenge may be self-evident: There’s nothing
to look at, so everything has to be conveyed with music and voices
and sound effects,” Kaufman said.
Of course, when Kaufman says something is obvious, he’s
probably thinking about how to make it less so. His play, which
will be presented by UCLA Live with another one-act sound play from
Sept. 14-16, is titled “Hope Leaves the Theater.”
It’s a double play on words. Kaufman wouldn’t have it
any other way.
First, he titled a play with no action with an action. Second,
the hope in his title isn’t hope at all, but a Hope ““ a
character named Hope Davis, played by Hope Davis.
It’s a bit like John Malkovich in “Being John
Malkovich,” only Davis isn’t a pod but herself. Meryl
Streep and Peter Dinklage (“The Station Agent”) will
accompany her on stage and fill out the cast, playing various roles
each, including themselves.
The play is about Davis literally leaving the theater, but of
course Davis physically stays up on stage the whole time.
It’s all even more difficult to wrap your head around when
you remember the play is set in the present. The exact present.
Ңbull;Ӣbull;Ӣbull;
Kaufman has written a play set in the present. In the past,
specifically in April, which used to be the present, it was
performed for the first time in London’s Royal Festival Hall
with another sound play written by Joel and Ethan Coen.
Both were hits, and played later at St. Ann’s Warehouse in
New York. There they were recorded for broadcast by SIRIUS Radio,
essentially turning the sound plays into radio plays and adding
another ironic twist to the whole experiment.
Royce Hall is the third place Burwell and company will perform
Theater of the New Ear. The Coen brothers are no longer involved,
and replacing them on the bill will be the world premiere of a new
sound play called “Anomalisa.” It was written by
Francis Fregoli and will star Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tom Noonan
(“Heat”) and David Thewlis (“Harry Potter and the
Prisoner of Azkaban”).
Even further in the past, the Royal Festival Hall asked Burwell
to conduct performances of his film scores in concert. He
didn’t like the idea because he wrote the scores to accompany
images and dialogue, but he orchestrated the vision behind Theater
of the New Ear instead.
Because it was a limited run, specifically designed to be three
performances so it would feel like a weekend instead of four or
more, which approaches work, Burwell was able to get all the talent
he wanted, and the sound play was born.
“My original concept was not to be theatrical, but
that’s what the Coens wanted to do,” Burwell said.
“I thought we’d do a dozen little things, more like
songs, instead of two big things.”
The pairing of two one-acts worked for everyone, in large part
because of the informal and limited nature of the project. Burwell
wrote the scores just before rehearsals started, which was a week
before performances began.
He hasn’t finished the score for “Anomalisa”
yet, but rehearsals don’t start until Sept. 6, so he has
time. He very well may be composing right now, in the present. The
exact present.
Ңbull;Ӣbull;Ӣbull;
Kaufman has written a play set in the present, which fits
Theater of the New Ear perfectly. Sound plays are different from
radio plays because their performances were created to be seen, not
just heard, even if nothing happens on stage. The form delights in
its own present state of being. “Hope Leaves the
Theater” may not work if you can’t see Davis sitting on
stage talking about her exit.
Additionally, the ragtag form is always changing. The Coen
brothers’ play was dropped, another was picked up, and
Kaufman immediately went into rewrite mode because the original
draft of his play began with Davis, Streep and Dinklage playing
audience members returning from intermission, talking about what
they had just seen. Without the Coen brothers’ play preceding
it, the lines wouldn’t make sense.
“If it’s not going to play, you can’t use
it,” Kaufman said. “Cutting is the process of saving
yourself from embarrassment.”
The point of “Hope Leaves the Theater” may be that
it’s always changing because that’s the way life works.
In a screenplay, the characters’ lives cannot change once
they’ve been filmed. Here, they can.
That’s why Kaufman has written a play set in the present.
The exact present. It’s impossible to live any other way.